Crossing the Nullabor (Esperance to Balledonia to Eucla to Ceduna)

The reason you do not let the
three year old take the photo...

We had a few more days in Esperance and - sorry to sound repetitive - it had fantastic beaches with blisteringly white sands. It is quite extraordinary that so many fantastic beaches would be in one state. If any of the these beaches were on the east coast you would have more tourists on them than flys (about which more is said - see below) but out here they are often deserted.

The flys were REALLY bad.

The flys.  They were the one great drawback.  Again, after a bit of rain and the sun comes out and then so do the flys.  In enormous numbers. We had no problems sitting on the beach in our cosies wearing out fly nets on out heads.  Honestly, its not a great look but its the only way to avoid going insane.  The only thing that keeps them away is the wind.  But sometimes its really windy and they still hang around.  They are bad days.


The great beaches are to the east - at Cape Le Grand National Park - and to the west. There is a well known beach at Cape Le Grand called Lucky Bay.  It is said to have the whitest sand of any beach in Australia and kangaroos come down and sit on the beach.  Well, that would be fine it it was not for all the seaweed.  We did not think it was the best beach at Cape Le Grand (Hellfire was our pick) let alone Australia.

I am thinking that it probably will not
make it into any Tourism Australia
advertisements.  I was not even brave
enough to take a photo of the ablutions
block,

Two good things about the
Nullabor.  Nice cliffs, cute kids.
That's it.

We then packed up and headed off for the 1400 kms trip across the Nullabor.  Its called the Nullabor because is null and a bore (and, yes, latin buffs because there is a short section with no trees).  And there is a very limited choice of caravan parks.  None have water to your vans and their ablution blocks (as we know call them) vary between disgusting and really disgusting.  If the water actually works in the toilets (which it did not at one of them) then the toilets will block up (which it did at both).  Some of them are never cleaned and there is not a blade of grass on any of them.  Add to that the fact that a major storm followed us across the Nullabor and it was not the high point of the trip.  But it was never going to be.  Unless you are Isaac in which case the chance to spend three solid days watching the "Dora the Explorer - Big Sister" DVD is his idea of heaven.

Apparently, the idea of not spitting at all
is not one that would appeal to good
burghers of Ceduna...

We are now in Ceduna which the more honest travel books describe as a "blow through" town.  Its on the north west edge of the Eyre Peninsula.  There is not much to keep you here other than the need to recover from the past few days.  Oh, and the fact that the Geoff Betts Menswear store is for sale.  Dad has aways had a thing for the smell of those shops of old men's clothes.  So we may come and live here.

South West Western Australia (aka Cervantes to Perth (Woods Point) to Margaret River (Gracetown) to Albany to Hopetoun to Esperance

Not all them look circumsized.

Yes, its been a while since the last post and I think I had better set out our voyages in summary point form for fear of boring the reading audience to death.

Cervantes

Talking of boring to death, Cervantes.  There is nothing that special about the place - especially when the weather was not great - other than being the entrance to the Pinnacles - which are a form of rocks that look like giant - sorry, I mean about normal sized - penises.  (Miss Sam, good luck explaining this to the Anouk's friends in the Butterfly room).  First we walked around them and then we drove around them.  We have become pretty fond of the tourist attractions that you do not have to get out of your car to look at.

We also looked at some more Stomalocites (I am not spelling that right and I don't care) - the living rocks.  Even more amazing than them is the fact that we drove to see a second batch of them.

Perth

Its a lie to say we stayed in Perth - Woods Point was actually the location which is about 25km south of Perth,  We did check out the town and took the kids to a Rio Tinto advertisement (Naturescape) in Kings Park that was aimed at explaining the bush - and all the good things Rio Tinto had done to the bush) to city kids.  Good that we had spent 4 months travelling through the bush and then got to the city to teach them about the bush.  Anyway, we were congratulating ourselves on finding it given that it had only been open for three weeks and was not in any guide books.  (Hint to parents - follow the prams).

Two hot babes on the ferris wheel at
Fremantle.  This photo was taken before
dad told mum how much it the ride cost.

We also checked out Freo and had dinner at the Little Creatures Brewery - about dad's favourite experience given that it also had a sandpit so that our little angels could entertain themselves while dad drank himself into a stupor. Just about the perfect day save that as we were going in we say a giant ferris wheel that, thankfully, was not working. Anouk was upset and we told her that, gosh darn it, if only it was open we could have gone on it.  Of course, when we left the brewery, it was open and we had to go on it.  So about $90 lighter (about the same price as a a carton  and a half of Little Creatures pale ale) we made our way back to Woods Point.   (Hint to parents - check out the price of rides before exclaiming a disappointment that you cannot ride it).

We also made our way to Rottnest Island and got around on the bus.  Saw some amazing whales really close in who were having a great time blowing water and breaching out of the water.  It was also here that we racked up playground number 100 that the kids have been on during the trip.  Glad to spend $194 getting to the Island so that we could find another playground.  A few lunches were nearly lost on the trip back but we managed to keep them in check fortunately.

We lost Nana and Pa here for few days as them went to Coffs Harbour for a wedding.

Margaret River (actually, Gracetown)

Choosing caravan parks is a difficult task.  In Margaret River we opted for Gracetown.  That was a mistake.  It was crap.  Margaret River more generally, on the other hand, was cold but otherwise fantastic;

• We passed through Busselton and stayed for lunch.  Next time, we will stay for a week;
• We went from "Cape to Cape" - Cape Leeuwin in the most south westerly corner of Australia to Cape Naturaliste which was more north and dad and Anouk went up two lighthouses in two days.  The others only went up the one at Cape Naturaliste (because you have to be 4 to go up the lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin)
• We visited a number of wineries (Saracen, Leeuwin estate) and breweries (Bootleg) and managed to spend a small fortune on dad's 40th birthday present at Leeuwin
• We went to one of the caves in the area - Mammoth cave;
• Dad realised after the event that he had been to a number of the wineries and Mammoth Cave the last time he was here 14 years ago;



Just another ho hum beach by WA
standards - this one at Eagle Bay

• We checked out Eagle Bay amd Meeling and voted them in our top 5 beaches we have seen in this trip - which puts them in the top 5 beaches we have seen in our lives.  We are planning to establish a caravan park there and now just have to convince the government to sell us a bit of the national park and let us cut down a few trees.  Should not be a problem.

Albany
 

The gaps in the Tingle trees are sometimes
so large you can park a car in them. Which
people use to do until the killed the tree.
Now, you just get a photo taken of a photo of
the car. And if you are one, you press your face
against the windscreen....

Albany was, to some extent, a disappointment.  The coastline is very rugged and has some amazing scenery but, when they built things, they just buggered things up. The town is a bit of a mess.  The caravan park - at Middleton Beach - however, was amongst the best we have been to. Heated pool and spa, two rooms for kids to play, indoor theatre, playground, best family bathroom ever - we loved it.  And it was lucky it had these things because, for the most park, all it did in Albany was rain.  There was buckets of the stuff.  (We are making up for the 14 weeks when we did not see a drop). 

On the way to Albany, we stopped off at Walpole and walked through the tree top walk in the "Valley of the Giants" (the "giants" are the Tingle trees).   This was really worth doing but it does sway a lot so it gave mum's vertigo a pretty good workout.

Ah yes, that family...

They conducted whaling from Albany until 1978 and they have a "Whale world" on the site of the whaling station - which is actually quite a good representation of what went on there.  Its certainly not pro-whaling (actually, its shows the barbaric practices in the their full glory) but it does not bag the working people who were just making a living either. 

Isaac teaching Pa to dry the dishes. 

A really old bloke had his 40th in Albany.  That did not depress him.  However, turning 40 and one day was pretty bad because that meant he was then closer to 50 than to 30.  However, it was well celebrated at the Tanglehead brewery in Albany.  There could be a lot worse places to spend one's 40th except that, of course, one of the little angels (yes, you Yvette) decided to be a total pain.  Now, a word of clarification is required here.  As noted previously, Isaac was being a total pain for a while but either he has improved a lot or Yvette and Anouk's behaviour has deteriorated to such an extent that he seems to be behaving well.  Anyway, if Yvette is not screaching at the top of her lungs at 5am (for who knows what reason) then Anouk is crying because she has (a) hurt herself (b) cannot find a doll/hair brush/hat/jumper/shoes/piece of paper/speck of dust  or (c) we have belted her for crying - see (a) and (b).  Whose idea was it to bring them along anyway?

We saw another great beach at Green's Pool which is near Denmark (no, not that Denmark) about 50 kms west of Albany.  Actually, next time we visit, we will probably stay in Denmark and not Albany.  We figure that the importance of a playground in the caravan park will have diminished by the time we are next back here.

Hopetoun

Its too far from Albany to Esperance (over 500kms) so we stayed in Hopetoun along the way.  Don't stay there.  How a town on such a piece of coast line can be so crap is a mystery.  But it is. And the caravan park is about the worst we have stayed in.  Lost hot water during the kids baths and no toilet paper in the bathrooms are just two of the problems we had.  Do not go to this place.  You have been warned. In fact, just ditch the kids and go from Albany to Esperance.

Esperance

Got here today and have checked out the town but, given the views we have of the bay and the islands, we may not leave the caravan park. 

View from our site are reasonable in Esperance.  Of course,
the kids are more impressed by what the see in the foreground.

Hopefully, the next post will not be so long.  But I make no promises.

Kalbarri to Dongara to Cervantes

We can tell that we are getting closer to the big smoke.  Anouk only asks about three times a day, "Are we in the middle of nowhere?" and the road signs that tell you how far it is to the next few towns do not pretend that a petrol station is an entire town.  Oh, and also, there are some people about.

They take their bird control pretty
seriously in Dongara.

Mum stayed in Geraldton about 15 years ago. Its fair to say that she did not enjoy it.  The fact that she was there for about 3 weeks with a group of surfing/windsurfing friends who surfed and windsurfed the whole time - and she did not - may have had something to do with it.  So we drove on through Geraldton - save to stop for some shopping and a very good playground - and went to Dongara/Port Denison (its really just one town with a river that goes through the middle of it and ends up wtih two names).  The tourist brochures would describe it as a "sleepy sea-side town".  Comatose may be more apt although to give it some credit, the bakery there did produce a chicken satay pie that Dad described as the best pie he has eaten.  High praise indeed because he has eaten a few pies in his time.

We did precious little in Dongara.  Sure, Nana and Pa caught and flight out to the Abrolhos Islands where they snorkled in the coral and saw the part of the reef where the Batavia ran aground in the 1600;s.  (They are pretty fond of the Batavia - and shipwrecks generally around these parts.  Seems that the boats that could actually get through the reef were pretty well forgotten while those that were wrecked are celebrated.) So they had the greatest day of their lives again - which was only partly due to the fact tha they got to spend time without three screaming children (and two screaming adults).  But it does not really count because the rest of us were not there.

When dad told Isaac to "Go fly
a kite" he did not expect this....

One evening in Dongara Dad made an early entry to win Father of Year 2012.  Consisistent wtih his desire to exhibit "challenging" behaviour Isaac decided to see how far he could push the boundaries.  He was saying some "naughty words" for about the tenth time in the day.  The comes a time when you can only threaten to wash out his mouth with soap so many times before you actually have to do it.  Dad reached that stage.  What followed next was Isaac's fault for (a) being a turd and (b)  not opening his mouth properly.  The mouth washing was to be done with liquid soap.  Its easier to get in than the traditional stuff.  Dad swears he only put in a tiny amount but however much he put in Isaac swallowed yet.  This was Isaac's third mistake.  Anouk always just spat it out.  Anyway. once he swallowed it, we were in real strife and the inevitable occurred - in the van and on the mat outside.  It was a bit of a mess. 

Imagine what he would have been like
if we actually did things in Dongara.

On the positive side of parenting, Yvette did take her first few staggering steps in Dongara.  Which excited Anouk and Isaac no end.  Which is nice.

We did make a trip into Geraldton and while there are some nice new sections on the foreshore area, a little back from the foreshore is a city that really struggles.  You can walk through street after street, and arcade after arcade where all the shops are closed or are closing.  It may not just have been the windsurfing that gave Mum a bad impression of Geraldton all those years ago.  Although the museum is pretty good - as noted, they do like a good shipwreck around here.

Its difficult to know what is
more remarkable - the amount
of weed on the beach at Cervantes
or the fact that a photo was being
taken and Anouk chose not to be in
it.

Anyway, we then moved on Cervantes - about 200 kms north of Perth - and gateway to the "Pinnacles" (yeah, I don't really know what they are either).  There has been record wet conditions in south west WA this year.  We thought we would turn that around.  We did not and all we have seen in Cervantes is rain and a beach that is absolutely covered in seaweed. It had to happen eventually (the rain more so that then seaweed...)  Dad is starting to remember why he hates camping.

Carnavon to Shark Bay (Denham) to Kalbarri

So after the delights of Carnavon we headed off to the world hertiage area of Shark Bay.  Given what we have seen in the past 13 weeks, we are now getting pretty fussy in terms of what impresses us.  Turquiose water is not enough.

Mum taking a photo of some rocks that
breathe.  They reminded dad of some
clients he has had ....

One thing that did not impress us great was a bunch of rocks that we all apparently descended from about 10 billion years ago - stomatalites. They look like rocks but are apparently alive and they are said to have been the source of all life.  Mum said, somewhat unnecessarily, that she recogised the family resemblance between some of them and Dad.

There was some strange wet stuff coming out of the sky that we had not seen since southern Queensland but even it quickly dried up once we got to the caravan park. 

Two best friends - at least until Isaac
next punches her ...

The next day we headed off to Francois Perron National Park.  Again, not even the families of emus walking along the road in front of us could impress us.  We did get impressed at Eagle Bluff where you stood on a walkway looking over 150m cliffs and looking down at sharks and dolphins swimming the water.

Another thing that impressed us was the WA tourism commission's job that they have done wtih Monkey Mia.  "Come and feed the dolphins!" they tell you. Good luck.  Only 5 dolphins get fed and only 2 or 3 of them actually turn up and they only get fed 4 fish each.  On the day we were there, in two of three feeds, only one dolphin got fed - some only 4 people - out of hundreds - actually got to feed them.  In the third feed, Anouk was one of them, which changed our impression of the place somewhat but if you want to feed dolphins go to Tin Can Bay.

Don't worry, we did not hit them ...

Later that morning we headed out to sea in a catamaran and saw dugongs. That was actually pretty cool.  Mum again commented on the family resemblance that they had with dad.

While in Shark Bay Isaac celebrated his third birthday.  Not many of his his friends turned up to help him celebrate.  Hopefully birthday number 4 will be a bigger one for him.  He does keep on saying, "I can't believe I'm 3".  The reason he cannot believe it is because we kept on telling him and everyone else that he is two so that we can get him into the caravan parks wtihout paying for him.

After Shark Bay we made it to Kalbarri, a small seaside town about 600 kms north of Perth.  It is home to the largest number of flies ever seen on the planet at any point in time.  They crawl in your eyes, your ears and up your nose.  The are disgusting.  We may have enjoyed Kalbarri without the flies.  With them, we did not even though we did see pods of about thirty dolphins swimming just off-shore.

Yes, you know a family of complete dorks.  Surely the photo
of the gits in Mt Isa let you know that already.

Dad had the idea one mornng to go out for breakfast.   This was after Yvette woke up at 5am and dad had to walk her around town so that some people in the caravan park could get some sleep. Sounded like a plan doesn't it especially when there is a cafe next to the caravan park?  Alas, once we got there, it was not open on Mondays.  We travelled on to another cafe only to find there were too many flies and a menu that only allowed for kids to eat scones - not for breakfast.  So we ended up at the bakery.  While there, two rather large females were buying their breakfast - pies, cream buns etc - the usual breakfast fare that one expects.  Mum said, in a very loud voice, "You are not having that for breakfast!"  Now, Mum's story is that she was talking to the kids who were saying that they wanted chocolate eclairs. However, the two women did not see it that way and retorted, "We are on holidays!"  Glad to see mum taking on the fitness message in such a direct fashion. We then thought we lost out keys on the way back to the van and the kids did not like the applies slices we bought for them.  We had Rice Bubbles about 9am.  Not the best morning especially when the flies were even thicker than the day before.

Tomorrow travelling further south.  Apparently, they are having record wet conditions down the south of the state. However, the great weather loves us and we are sure the rain is going to stop for us.